High Court Critics Want Blood: Brown

SACRAMENTO —  Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), an avowed opponent of capital punishment, said Wednesday the state Supreme Court could defuse some of the attacks against it “if some of those people on Death Row actually feel the full weight of their penalty.”

Brown added, “There are some people that obviously ought to go on and meet their maker.”

But the Speaker, at a breakfast session with The Times’ Sacramento Bureau staff, quickly said he was not suggesting that the death penalty be used for political reasons.

Asked how his comments squared with his opposition to the death penalty, he said: “I didn’t say they (the court) should solve their problem by frying somebody. I’m just telling you that in the course of the law, and all of the appeals that are appropriate, if the law is finally administered . . . I think the hostility to the court is going to be substantially reduced.”

Defend Court’s Integrity

Brown said Democrats should defend the integrity of the court but not get involved in the defense of individual justices when five of them appear on next year’s general election ballot for voter confirmation.

He said Gov. George Deukmejian and other Republians “are crazy to allow themselves to be put into a position where they become the spokespersons as elected officials” against liberal members of the court.

But Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird--the main target of Deukmejian and other court critics--and her colleagues could rid themselves of an issue that opponents will use against them, Brown said, if there are some executions before next fall.

“If some of those people on Death Row actually feel the full weight of their penalty . . . then not even Deukmejian is going to be able to stir up any emotions,” Brown said. “If five people went to death over a period of two months, I am telling you that there is no way in the world that blood thirst isn’t going to be already satisfied.”

Another Opportunity

Brown said the court also could rid itself of the problem if some of the death penalty cases move to the U.S. Supreme Court after all appeals in California have been exhausted and conservative members of the federal bench sign stays of execution “on the same legal theories and same respect for the law as our own Supreme Court has been doing.”

Since capital punishment was reinstituted in California in 1977, the state Supreme Court has heard 32 appeals of death penalty sentences and reversed 29 of them. There have been no executions, a point repeatedly made by Deukmejian in his criticism of Bird and her fellow justices.